Unlearning the Colonial Gaze
Grada Kilomba and the Poetics of Disobedience
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21974168 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Luciana Da Costa Dias (0000-0001-5627-5431, Universidade de Brasília, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 124 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-20 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Arts (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2076-0752 • E-ISSN: 2076-0752 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/arts14050124 |
| OpenAlex | W4415361934 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 13 |
Since the mid-twentieth century, a profound reconfiguration of the epistemic ground of ‘art’ itself—aesthetic theory—has taken place. This review examines how modern logic and the inseparability of the modernity/coloniality pair have impacted aesthetic thought, revisiting traditional aesthetics through the concept of a decolonial aisthesis. Methodologically, it mobilises a bibliographic review of decolonial thought in dialogue with feminist theory and undertakes a case-based analysis of Grada Kilomba’s exhibition Poetic Disobediences (2019). This review also forms part of a larger research project on decolonial aisthesis, feminisms, and performance art, with results disseminated in various contexts. Distinctively, it foregrounds Kilomba’s installation The Dictionary (2019) as a central case study, emphasising how it dismantles the grammar of “healing” through language and performance and exploring its implications through the lens of Latina and Black feminisms. The results highlight the need to critically rethink aesthetics: if aesthetics is a modern and thus colonial construct, it must be unlearned and reimagined from within. The review concludes that poetic and epistemic disobedience emerge as insurgent gestures capable of destabilising coloniality in art, pointing not to the abolition of aesthetics, but to its decolonial reconceptualisation as a theoretical and methodological horizon
Colonialism · Exhibition · Gesture · Grammar · Poetics · Poetry · African history and culture studies · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
The Transformative Power of Performance
Production of Presence
The Crisis of Representation, the Performative Turn and Presence
‘To decolonize is to perform’
Heterosexualism and the Colonial / Modern Gender System
The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference
Ways of Worldmaking
Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom
Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality
On the Coloniality of Being
| Highly cited | No |
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